A typical conventional fryer control system consists of a mechanical control thermostat connected in series with two parallel connected contactor coils. Timing typically is provided by separate mechanical timers which merely alert the operator to the passage of time and are not integrated with the temperature sensing. Also prior solid fat melt control systems were essentially independent of the basic control. On the one hand this led to some of them being overly complicated in an effort to assure proper fat melt and, on the other hand, resulted in some being less than completely satisfactory. A number of approaches are known for attempting to correlate cooking time to the particular food being prepared and the actual cooking fluid temperature. Many prior art cooking controls have a narrow response range which limits any particular controller to use with a single food product. Other cooking controls attempt to provide a single cooking control for several foods by including a step type selector. With such an approach the control has only limited adjustment about each of a few benchmark control points. In some such controls the product or crisp selection varies the voltage operating limits of an integrating capacitor while cooking fluid temperature variations change the charging current. Such an approach provides a control which is not totally satisfactory. For instance, equal changes in voltage at different points in the operating range produce unequal differences in charging time.
It is thus desirable to provide an integrated system providing complete control, including improved interrelationship with the particular food being cooked and the cooking fluid temperature.